Inferno

Dante Alighieri

Analysis of Major Characters

Cantos I–II

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.

The Perfection of God’s Justice

Dante creates an imaginative correspondence between a
soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment he or she receives in Hell.
The Sullen choke on mud, the Wrathful attack one another, the Gluttonous
are forced to eat excrement, and so on. This simple idea provides
many of Inferno’s moments of spectacular imagery
and symbolic power, but also serves to illuminate one of Dante’s
major themes: the perfection of God’s justice. The inscription over
the gates of Hell in Canto III explicitly states that God was moved
to create Hell by Justice (III.7).
Hell exists to punish sin, and the suitability of Hell’s specific
punishments testify to the divine perfection that all sin violates.

This notion of the suitability of God’s punishments figures
significantly in Dante’s larger moral messages and structures Dante’s Hell.
To modern readers, the torments Dante and Virgil behold may seem
shockingly harsh: homosexuals must endure an eternity of walking
on hot sand; those who charge interest on loans sit beneath a rain
of fire. However, when we view the poem as a whole, it becomes clear
that the guiding principle of these punishments is one of balance.
Sinners suffer punishment to a degree befitting the gravity of their
sin, in a manner matching that sin’s nature. The design of the poem
serves to reinforce this correspondence: in its plot it progresses
from minor sins to major ones (a matter of degree); and in the geographical
structure it posits, the various regions of Hell correspond to types
of sin (a matter of kind). Because this notion of balance informs
all of God’s chosen punishments, His justice emerges as rigidly
objective, mechanical, and impersonal; there are no extenuating
circumstances in Hell, and punishment becomes a matter of nearly
scientific formula.

Early in Inferno, , Dante builds a great
deal of tension between the objective impersonality of God’s justice
and the character Dante’s human sympathy for the souls that he sees
around him. As the story progresses, however, the character becomes
less and less inclined toward pity, and repeated comments by Virgil
encourage this development. Thus, the text asserts the infinite
wisdom of divine justice: sinners receive punishment in perfect
proportion to their sin; to pity their suffering is to demonstrate
a lack of understanding.

Evil as the Contradiction of God’s Will

In many ways, Dante’s Inferno can be seen as a kind of
imaginative taxonomy of human evil, the various types of which Dante
classifies, isolates, explores, and judges. At times we may question
its organizing principle, wondering why, for example, a sin punished
in the Eighth Circle of Hell, such as accepting a bribe, should
be considered worse than a sin punished in the Sixth Circle of Hell,
such as murder. To understand this organization, one must realize
that Dante’s narration follows strict doctrinal Christian values.
His moral system prioritizes not human happiness or harmony on Earth but
rather God’s will in Heaven. Dante thus considers violence less evil
than fraud: of these two sins, fraud constitutes the greater opposition
to God’s will. God wills that we treat each other with the love he
extends to us as individuals; while violence acts against this love, fraud
constitutes a perversion of it. A fraudulent person affects care and
love while perpetrating sin against it. Yet, while Inferno implies these
moral arguments, it generally engages in little discussion of them. In
the end, it declares that evil is evil simply because it contradicts
God’s will, and God’s will does not need further justification.
Dante’s exploration of evil probes neither the causes of evil, nor
the psychology of evil, nor the earthly consequences of bad behavior.
Inferno is not a philosophical text; its intention is not to think
critically about evil but rather to teach and reinforce the relevant
Christian doctrines.

Storytelling as a Way to Achieve Immortality

Dante places much emphasis in his poem on the notion of
immortality through storytelling, everlasting life through legend
and literary legacy. Several shades ask the character Dante to recall
their names and stories on Earth upon his return. They hope, perhaps,
that the retelling of their stories will allow them to live in people’s
memories. The character Dante does not always oblige; for example,
he ignores the request of the Italian souls in the Ninth Pouch of
the Eighth Circle of Hell that he bring word of them back to certain
men on Earth as warnings. However, the poet Dante seems to have
his own agenda, for his poem takes the recounting of their stories
as a central part of its project. Although the poet repeatedly emphasizes
the perfection of divine justice and the suitability of the sinners’
punishments, by incorporating the sinners’ narratives into his text
he also allows them to live on in some capacity aboveground.

Yet, in retelling the sinners’ stories, the poet Dante
may be acting less in consideration of the sinners’ immortality
than of his own. Indeed, Dante frequently takes opportunities to
advance his own glory. Thus, for example, in Canto XXIV, halfway
through his description of the Thieves’ punishment, Dante declares
outright that he has outdone both Ovid and Lucan in his ability
to write scenes of metamorphosis and transformation (Ovid’s Metamorphoses focuses entirely on transformations; Lucan wrote the Pharsalia, an
account of the Roman political transition and turmoil in the first century b.c.). By claiming to have surpassed two of the classical poets
most renowned for their mythological inventions and vivid imagery,
Dante seeks to secure his own immortality.

Thus, Dante presents storytelling as a vehicle
for multiple legacies: that of the story’s subject as well as that
of the storyteller. While the plot of a story may preserve the living
memory of its protagonist, the story’s style and skill may serve
the greater glory of its author. Although many of his sinners die
a thousand deaths—being burned, torn to bits, or chewed to pieces,
only to be reconstituted again and again—Dante emphasizes with almost
equal incessancy the power of his narrative to give both its subjects
and its author the gift of eternal life.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Political Arguments

An unquestionably significant part of Dante’s aim in writing Inferno was to offer a large-scale commentary on the political nightmare
of fourteenth-century Florence, from which he had recently been exiled.
He makes his assertions in various ways. First, he condemns political
figures with whom he disagreed by scattering them ruthlessly throughout
Hell. Second, because Dante sets the action of Inferno several years
before the years in which he wrote it, he can predict, as it were,
certain events that had already taken place by the time of his writing.
He issues these seeming predictions via the voices of the damned,
apparently endowed at death with prophetic powers. In these
souls’ emphasis on the corruption and turmoil of the so-called future
Florence, Dante aims pointed criticism at his former home. Third,
Dante asserts throughout the poem his personal political belief
that church and state should exist as separate but equal powers on
Earth, with the former governing man’s spirit and the latter governing
his person. Thus, in his many references to Rome, Dante carefully mentions
both its spiritual and secular importance.

The poem’s arresting final image provides another testament
to the equal importance of church and state: Lucifer chews both
on Judas (the betrayer of Christ, the ultimate spiritual leader)
and on Cassius and Brutus (the betrayers of Caesar, the ultimate
political leader). Treachery against religion and against government
both warrant placement in Hell’s final circle. While Dante emphasizes
the equality of these two institutions, he also asserts the necessity
of their separation. He assigns particularly harsh punishments to
souls guilty of broaching this separation, such as priests or popes
who accepted bribes or yearned for political power.

Classical Literature and Mythology

Although the values that Inferno asserts
are decidedly Christian, on a thematic and literary level, the poem
owes almost as much to Greek and Roman tradition as it does to Christian
morality literature. Dante’s Christian Hell features a large variety
of mythological and ancient literary creatures, ranging from the
Centaurs to Minos to Ulysses. He even incorporates mythological
places, such as the rivers Acheron and Styx. In addition, Dante
often refers to and imitates the styles of great classical writers
such as Homer, Ovid, Lucan, and Virgil himself. He therefore attempts
to situate himself within the tradition of classical epics while
proving that he is a greater writer than any of the classical poets.

Dante incorporates this ancient material for other reasons
too, including the simple fact that mythological elements contain
much dramatic potential. More important, however, Dante includes mythological
and classical literary elements in his poem to indicate that Christianity
has subsumed these famous stories; by bringing many religious strands
under one umbrella, Dante heightens the urgency and importance of
his quest—a quest that he believes necessary for all human beings.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

It is impossible to reduce the iconic complexity of Inferno to
a short list of important symbols. Because the poem is an overarching
allegory, it explores its themes using dozens, even hundreds, of
symbols, ranging from the minutely particular (the blank banner
chased by the Uncommitted in Canto III, symbolizing the meaninglessness
of their activity in life) to the hugely general (the entire story
of The Divine Comedy itself, symbolizing the spiritual
quest of human life). Many of the symbols in Inferno are
clear and easily interpretable, such as the beast Geryon—with the
head of an innocent man and the body of a foul serpent, he represents
dishonesty and fraud. Others are much more nuanced and difficult
to pin down, such as the trio of creatures that stops Dante from
climbing the sunlit mountain in Canto I. When reading Inferno,
it is extremely important to consider each element of the poem according
to how it fits into Dante’s larger system of symbolism—what it says
about the scene, story, and themes of the work and about human life.

Perhaps the most important local uses of symbolism in Inferno involve the punishments of the sinners, which are always
constructed so as to correspond allegorically to the sins that they
committed in life. The Lustful, for example, who were blown about
by passion in life, are now doomed to be blown about by a ferocious storm
for all of time. Other major types of symbols include figures who
represent human qualities, such as Virgil, representative of reason,
and Beatrice, representative of spiritual love; settings that represent
emotional states, such as the dark forest in Canto I, embodying
Dante’s confusion and fear; and figures among the damned who may
represent something more than merely their sins, such as Farinata,
who seems to represent qualities of leadership and political commitment
that transcend his identity as a Heretic in Hell.

In the 3rd circle of Dante's Inferno, the Gluttonous are torn apart(eaten) by Cerberus the three-headed dog. Flatters are found in the 8th circle and they are who is plunged in excrement. They were full of it in life so they are full of it in death.